By Claire McGowan

A passion project for writer Claire McGowan, and an Amazon First Reads selection. Ireland is a seemingly quiet place, except for the Troubles, or was it? Women went missing, were assaulted, raped, or just disappeared. The book focuses on 8 women, although may other cases (solved and unsolved) are referenced.

The writing is good, although there is repetition of what Ireland was like when Claire was a girl, about the lack of news coverage of most of the cases, of the Catholic hypocrisy and repression, the way that the authorities ignored the reports of missing women and blamed their loose morals or claimed they ran off with men. Where technology was lagging behind the rest of the world. Police forces much more concerned with terror and retribution attacks, of protecting assets, that rape and murder are considered the lesser evil. So, America in the 30s or 40s, but in the 80’s and 90’s. The writing is very stream of consciousness, a story of a kidnapping and near murder broken up by hunters in the middle of nowhere.

My main problem with the book – we get the basics of the cases and jump around a lot. There is a lot of conjecture. A lot of “The locals know who did it. And you can Google the case to find out what they say. But I can’t say due to libel laws.” A lot of circling around. She points out accurately that if this were her novels there would be an easy answer. One villain caught by the end. This book did a good job of drawing attention to the situation. And it made my go down a rabbit hole of Google searches about the women.

192 Pages

3/5